Sir Richard Sheridan Patrick Michael Aloysius Franklin Bowling (né Richard Sheridan Franklin Bowling;
born 26 February 1934), known as Frank Bowling, is a British artist who was born in British Guiana. He is particularly renowned for his large-scale, abstract "Map" paintings, which relate to abstract expressionism, colour field painting and lyrical abstraction. Bowling has been described as "one of Britain’s greatest living abstract painters", as "one of the most distinguished black artists to emerge from post-war British art schools" and as a "modern master". British cultural critic and theorist Stuart Hall situates Bowling’s career within a first generation, or “wave” of post-war, Black-British art, one characterised by postwar politics and British decolonisation. He is the first black artist to be elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts.
A portrait of Sir Frank Bowling in his studio by Sacha Bowling, 2020. Photographed by Sacha Bowling. ©Frank Bowling Studio
Frank Bowling, Cover Girl, 1966
Frank Bowling, Polish Rebecca, 1971
Frank Bowling, Grating Rhymes, 1978
Color field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to abstract expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering abstract expressionists. Color field is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes and action in favor of an overall consistency of form and process. In color field painting "color is freed from objective context and becomes the subject in itself."
Kenneth Noland, Beginning, 1958, magna on canvas painting, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Working in Washington, D.C., Noland was a pioneer of the color field movement in the late 1950s.
Henri Matisse, Porte-fenêtre à Collioure (French Window at Collioure), 1914, Centre Georges Pompidou, "Throughout my life, the 20th-century painter whom I've admired the most has been Matisse", Robert Motherwell 1970.
Jack Bush, Big A, 1968. Bush was a Canadian abstract expressionist painter, born in Toronto, Ontario in 1909. He became closely tied to the two movements that grew out of the efforts of the abstract expressionists: color field painting and lyrical abstraction.
Ronnie Landfield, Rite of Spring, 1985. Landfield's work emerged during the 1960s. His works are reflections of both Chinese landscape painting and the color field idiom. His paintings bridge color field painting with lyrical abstraction.